The first draft was written between my time acting in the drama The Future (by Andrew Harrison – no relation) in a theatre in Hampstead, London in the summer of 2007 and my acting in the comedy Alone Together (by Lawrence Roman) in a theatre in Hamburg, Germany, the following winter. It is in part a reaction to these two plays and in part to personal circumstances. As a result it is occasionally melodramatic and at others almost histrionic. It was also written by a working actor – hence too much written direction – and something of a novelist manqué – hence too much scene-setting. That said, there is definitely something there in terms of a purified and refined essence of tragedy.

The second draft, which was staged at the Jermyn Street Theatre in London’s West End in the Summer of 2008 (see reviews below) was rewritten, at first at the request of, then at the insistence of, and the final scene by the director of that production. I can only say of my relationship with that director that it began as fraught and mistrustful and got steadily worse. I personally believe that their relationship with the story itself was similar and I cannot claim to understand their motives for attaching to the production in the first place. I am inclined to agree with the critic who said about the product of the director’s changes that it “feels like an eviscerated version of a much longer script. Every situation is so lightly sketched, with so little detail, actual dialogue or time for it to develop, that the entire tragedy feels like it is over before it even started.”

It is worth noting that the earlier draft is almost exactly twice the length of the later one. I hope one day to attempt to combine the good points from both drafts.